The day started slowly. It was raining until noon so we had an instant noodle brunch and waited for the rain to stop. When it finally stopped, we started a walk to a local Tao temple on the top of an hill.
Not many people went there today so it was a nice and quiet walk over 5km.

There was a pretty temple at the bottom of the hill.

And another, bigger one on top.

There was a Tao celebration going on,so we didn’t go in but interesting to see.
The view from the top would have been nicer with better weather.

There was an impressive octagonal field on the bottom of the other side,which was, according to a legend, worked by an emperor.

I found the local fauna pretty interesting. These were everywhere:

Some of them were more than 10 centimeters long. Also some pretty butterflies and funny birds were nice to observe.

After the walk, we went to town to meet friends of Meng. Very nice people. Communication was not always easy but we had a nice evening. We went to a popular restaurant together. This time, we had to wait for more than an hour to get a table. I didn’t take a proper picture of the food but as always, we got a lot of great dishes. Especially the long cooked pork belly here is a regional specialty and put into steamed bread, made a delicious meal.
Getting back to the hotel was not so easy. Apparently, the last busses left around 9 o’clock, so we had to call an uber taxi. This took some time, a lot of people were looking for taxis tonight. Usually the public transport was pretty good in China so far, but that the busses stopped operating so early was a bit strange.

It was very hot. About 32 degrees and high humidity. But the forecast for the next day didn’t look so nice, so we rented bikes today to cycle around the West Lake. My bike was too small for me and had a rusty chain but you take what you can get.

First stop was the tower at the lake. It had a pretty park around and provided a great view over the area.

The tower was the center of a Chinese tale and very popular among tourists. We went on and visited different parks on the west side of the lake. The most popular spot was the dam, which divided the lake in north-south direction. Seems that more than 95% of the tourists went here, but not so much to see there. This had the nice side effect that the beautiful parks in the west were almost empty of people.

We had a good lunch in one of the few restaurants in the area.

A G20 meeting will be hosted here in September. We realized this early since the security checks at the subway and different entrances were stricter than usual. Besides of showing the IDs we had take a sip from our water bottles to proof that it wasn’t explosives. Also a big part of the parks was closed for G20 preparations. Police officers were everywhere.

We cycled into town and bought some supplies for the evening and the next day. And a pizza for dinner this time. Cycling in China is a special experience. I would get crazy here if I would have to do it every day. There is a cycling lane next to most streets but these are blocked every hundred meters by parking cars and also shared with scooters and sometimes people who don’t care about anything. But we made it back in the end without bigger problems.

Hangzhou is a very nice place and much more relaxing than the big cities. Highly recommended.

Another transfer day. There was a thunderstorm over Shanghai but not a big problem since we were living close to the subway. We had a quick breakfast at a small snack bar on the way with rice noodle soup and filled bread which was steamed and fried. A filling meal, which was enough until the afternoon.

The train station was very crowded this time but we had enough time and were not in a hurry.

The train took just a bit more than an hour to Hangzhou. The city was much smaller than any of the other cities we had visited so far and also felt very different.

Meng booked a small family driven hotel for us, which was very nice. A bit further away from the center but in a quiet area.

We moved in, went to town and Meng chose a restaurant, which she knew from before because it belonged to a chain. The entrance was crazy because a lot of people were waiting for a table. We needed to draw a number and waited about 40 minutes for the table. In the meantime, we went to the lake and watched the water/music show.

When we finally got in, we had a huge dinner with 6 different dishes. We underestimated the size of the dishes a bit.

I didn’t get a good picture of all the food. But some of the highighlights were pork belly cooked with young bamboo and fish (yes, really).

And a cold duck dish in a sweet soy sauce and fluffy steamed rice bread.

This was it for today already. Hangzhou looked really nice so far and I am looking forward to see more of it and the lake tomorrow.

Shanghai is a much more international place than Beijing. Many foreigners are on the streets and nobody asks for selfies. Also, communication in English is possible at most places. These made Shanghai a very different place to Beijing or Qingdao.

We started this very hot and humid day by having an early lunch. We went to the Kung Fu Fish Restaurant and ordered a spicy fish, which prepared us for the long walks today.

Next, we took the subway to visit the park from the Expo 2010. It was a bit strange because we left the crowded center with an almost empty subway and passed very new but also very empty subway stations. The park was still in good condition but almost empty of people as well.

The impressive building were still there.

We also went in and walk around in the Mercedes Benz Arena. But there were almost no people in this huge building with restaurants and stores. The other Expo building were turned into a mall.

And the China Pavilion was an art exhibition now.

The exhibition was for free and it was good to see Chinese artworks. Most of the pictures were contemporary but realistic and of very big formats. Unfortunately only the ground floor was accessible.

Afterwards we went back to the center and it started to rain. We took cover in a shopping mall and Meng found a nice restaurant in the 8th floor. Malls are huge in this city and plenty. The restaurant was a pretty fancy one and we ordered a couple of dishes, which were new to me, but all of them were delicious. This was one of them:

Steamed lotus roots, stuffed with rice and marinated in honey. This consistency and taste was just great. We also had sweet pork ribs (really sweet) and mushrooms with cured, smoked pork. And we had a table right at the window with a view over Shanghai’s main street. One of the best dinners so far.

When we were done, the streets were even more crowded.

We went to the river, which was one of the places everybody must have seen when visiting Shanghai. We walked there in a huge crowd of people. The police was even guiding the crowd and this was in the middle of the week.

But it was worth it, even in this weather with very high humidity.

To get this picture we had to wait for a while until we got space at the railing close to the river.

Then we walked back in a queue. The weather here was exhausting and didn’t get much cooler after sunset. Meng had planned only one whole day in Shanghai and this was a very good idea. It is an interesting place but one day is enough to see how it is. Tomorrow, we will move on Hangzhou.

We packed our belongings and left the hotel around 11 o’clock, called an uber taxi and went to the train station. The trip took 40 minutes since the traffic was pretty dense. It was a “shared ride” with another person so it cost us just 1 euro. I wonder how the drivers can live off this salary. We had lots of time until the train was going to leave.

Taking the train from Qingdao was much more “normal” than from Beijing. We had to pass security checks as usual but besides of that, the train station was smaller and not overcrowded.

We bought lunch at McDonald’s. They had a different menu here. I tried a spicy and crispy chicken burger, which would be too hot for the European market but tasted good.

Our train was a bit delayed, so we had to wait a bit longer in the waiting hall, which was now stuffed with people. I don’t know why but crowds didn’t bother me so much here. Maybe it’s because I can see over most people’s heads?

We got into the train after a normal-chaotic boarding process. Cutting the lines is not really considered rude here. You just have to keep it flowing.

Now we had 7 hours of train ride ahead of us. Good time to prepare my presentation. We had a change of plan: Meng needed to go to her new University for a trial lecture, where she will work as a lecturer from August. So we skipped the mountains and will go to Qinghai instead. At first, we agreed that I will give a short informal talk to show what Nofima is and what we are doing to see if we could find topics for cooperative projects. Then it changed to a one-hour presentation and now it is an up to two hours lecture in front of students and professors with Meng as my translator. That will be interesting.. But now I really have to put effort in this. Seems that the university will pay for my trip to Qinghai and the hotel there. We will see how it will go but this could be a good experience and maybe we get a cooperation started.

When working in a Chinese train, noise-canceling headphones are like heaven! People watch movies on iPads with speakers on and everybody talks very loudly.

The seven hours in the train went pretty fast. I helped an old lady with her luggage and we got kind of a thin layered folded up crepe from her. We couldn’t communicate but this was nice.

When we arrived in Shanghai the temperature difference was quite overwhelming. It was 21 o’clock now but the air was very warm and humid. We went down to the subway and into town. Meng booked a room at a youth hostel, which turned out to be very nice. It was located in the center of Shanghai in the 5th floor of a huge building.

We checked in and went for a quick dinner. Tonight we tried a chicken leg, stuffed with rice from a small grill on the street and wonton soup at a tiny restaurant, selling only different wonton soups. This was one of the really good choices. Tasted a lot like German Maultaschen soup but I think, better.

They mix the meat filling with a lot of shepherd’s purse leafs, which gives it a fresh and special taste. One of the things everybody should try when visiting Shanghai.

We started the day with a Chinese version of a crepe for breakfast. This is popular street food here and very different from the French version. It is a thick dough, spread thinly on a hot plate, an egg is spread on top, then they add chopped spring onion, herbs, a crunchy piece of bread, salat and spicy sauce. Folded up and put in a paper back, it looks like this:

Really good stuff and a big portion for breakfast. It costs about 70 euro cents.
Then we went to Meng’s University, with the beautiful name Ocean University of China, by uber taxi. It had a really nice campus with lots of trees and classical building.

We took a long walk here and went to a viewing point close by, with a great view over the coast.

It was almost lunch time so we went to a hot pot restaurant close by. We ordered one which was split in the middle with a milder mushroom soup and a hot chilly soup. Because of a special offer, we got extra meat.

It looks more than it was because it was cut very thin but still a lot! We mixed our own sauces at a small sauce buffet started boiling the different ingredients,which were, besides of the meat, mushrooms and spinach. Then you pick what you like from the soup. This is one of the things, everybody should try when being China.

We were all very stuffed when we left the restaurant. Next stop was the Qingdao Beer Museum. We went there by bus, which was an experience by itself. You pay one Yuan when entering the bus (two, when the bus had air conditioning), then you will get an interesting ride in Chinese traffic. The busses seemed to have the right of way almost in every situation. Impressive where they managed to squeeze through.

Then we walked to the beer museum. Qingdao beer is the biggest beer brand in China, so this is an important part of the city.

The brewery was founded by Germans in 1903, during the occupation and had an interesting history (too long to describe here). It was funny to see the old bottle labels.

Besides of the history, you can also see the production line here and try the much sweeter raw beer. It was an interesting visit.

The street outside of the museum was full of restaurants (and cars of course):

Next stop was the most touristic spot of Qingdao. We took another bus and I realized what Meng ment by “most touristic”.

So many people were just walking here. It was a nice spot but very crowded. We walked to the end point and took some pictures. The cool wind from the sea was very pleasant after the hot day. I also had to take some selfies with random people again. It is a strange experience when people always stare at you because you look different. But I don’t mind. It is only because of curiosity.

A picture of the beach, a bit further away:

Then we took a bus back to the hotel and stopped for dinner on the way. We ordered fried asparagus and dumplings. I was ingenuous enough to mention that I should try sea cucumber to Meng. So I got a sea cucumber in rice porridge. This was something.. Like a ten centimeter long piece of black and soft cartilage with a fishy taste. One more thing I couldn’t eat..

Then back to the hotel, shower, writing this blog and sleep. Tomorrow evening, we should be in Shanghai. Qingdao was a really nice city and definitely worth a visit.

When I woke up, I had some trouble with diarrhea. I didn’t feel too bad and no throwing up. So it wasn’t food poisoning at least. I guess it happened because of the unusual food in the last days. I took some pills against it and it got better quickly. But I had to take it easy today.

I stayed in my room while the girls went for breakfast. Meng brought me some light food when they came back. After a while, I was ready to go again. These Imodium tables work wonders. It was lunch time and we went to a restaurant nearby. We got rise porridge, fried mushrooms and sweet pumpkin fries, covered in duck egg yolk. A good and light lunch, perfect for my situation. Then we walked to the seaside. Qingdao was a much more quiet city than Beijing and finally we got blue skies.

There are about 10 million people living here but it didn’t really feel like it. There were not many people at the tidy seaside, which was well worth seeing.

The Olympic sailing competitions were held here in 2008. The monument of the Olympic torch is a reminder for the events.

There was a big screen at the marina, showing a replay of the match Germany-France from the European football championship. I knew the unfortunate result already; better to move on quickly.

The three of us at the beach:

It was getting very warm and we decided to check the shopping mall (it was Sunday but in China, stores are always open). I needed some more t-shirts anyway.

In the end, we spent about three hours in the mall. I got enough shirts and an pair of shorts, which will be good to have for the warm days to come.

There was a big grocery store in the basement. It was interesting to see what was on offer in this country. I learned that wine is more close to Norwegian prices here (10 euro and up). Beer and spirits were cheaper, comparable with German prices. We bought some duck eggs, which were marinated in salty water for a month and then boiled. Pretty good stuff; funny to eat boiled eggs which are already salted.

The girls decided spontaneously to have dinner in the store. There you could choose your own ingredients for a soup (vegetables, mushrooms, noodles, fish and meat balls), give it all to a cook and he would boil it for you and spice it. So we all got our custom soups.

Maybe it doesn’t look so nice on the picture but was pretty good and very hot. This dinner cost about 1.5 euro per person. The pineapple for desert was super sweet. One of the best I tried so far.

Then we were sitting outside for a while, with a view over the marina. The Olympic monuments looked pretty in the night.

Khan bought a big piece of durian fruit. I tried a tiny piece of the fresh fruit this time and still couldn’t bear it. It was sweet first but when I was breathing out through the nose the rotten onion taste was just too much. I guess durian is the surströmming of the fruits. I also tried a Chinese white beer, which was different from the German versions but still good.

Suddenly the girls told me that they had booked a massage for us. Great idea! So we started walking to the massage place and got a 90 minute massage (this cost about 13 euro here). This was a good experience. Head massage, legs, arms, back and an extensive foot treatment. They told me (translated by Meng) that I had trouble with my digestive system and didn’t sleep well, based on my feet apparently. That was pretty interesting after what happened this morning. Fascinating what you can read from somebody’s feet. Chinese massage is less painful than the Thai version and we all felt relaxed afterwards. It was 23:30 when we arrived back at the hotel. Time to sleep!

We checked out of the hotel at 10 and walked to the subway, which brought us directly to the southern train station. Taking the train in Beijing is not like other train stations I have seen so far. It had several floors and we had to pass a security check first. Next was to find a ticket desk to register my passport. There we had to wait in a queue for 15 minutes (that part is pretty normal for a German train station as well though, with the difference that you don’t wait with 20 people but 200). Then picked up some breakfast and went to our “gate”.

Some more waiting there until we could board the train (after another passport control). But once in the train, everything was very convenient. Only reserved and comfortable seats and a train going 300 km per hour.

We passed some big cities on the way.

After 5 hours, we arrived in Qingdao, the first impression was that it was cooler than Beijing (probably about 25 degrees) but very humid.

Meng booked a nice hotel beforehand so we took an Uber taxi there. They also spoke German at the reception,which was a bit surprising. And we met Khan here, we knew each other from Norway, so it was very nice to meet again.

This was the second time that the hotel bed is super hard. Seems to be normal in China. I kind of like it but I can imagine that this is not for everyone. After moving in, we started looking for a dinner place. First we checked in the area but then we went by taxi to a very lively area of the city, which was well known for its sea food restaurants.

We chose one, which was very popular apparently and started ordering. This can take a while in China. Often you choose many different dishes and write you order down on a piece of paper. That’s what we did and also added a pitcher of a good local beer. When our food arrived, it didn’t fit on the table, so we had to pile it up.

Lots of different mollusks: sea water snails (which we picked out of the shell with tooth picks), grilled oysters and abalone, something like small scallops with rice noodles and small boiled muscles. All spicy and with different tastes than I am used to but very good nonetheless. As the starchy dishes, we had grilled potatoes and tasty grilled bread. One of the weirder experiences today were a cold jellyfish salat, which was unexpectedly good. The jellyfish absorbed the garlic dressing and had a rather firm texture. The other one was grilled silk worm pupae. When you bite on them, the soft inner part with a consistency of curd cheese oozes out and doesn’t taste like much. The problem was the hard shell, which was not very nice to chew. So these, I don’t have to try again.

All in all a great dinner with these lovely girls:

We all ate a bit too much and had to take a walk after dinner. In China, the stores are open basically all the time so we checked some of them on the way.

We slept long today and planned to take this day easy. We headed to the city at 11 o’clock and started the day by eating a Beijing duck at a restaurant, which was specialiced on this. They carved the duck next to the table und you get some crispy skin pieces as a starter, which you dip in sugar before eating. Then you get the breast with pancakes, cucumber, and spring onion. Dipped in soy sauce and wrapped up, this was a delicious meal and very different from the duck in Europe.

Then we walked to a park, close to the center which was kind of an spontaneous choice. It was a big park with a lake and a couple of tempels. The weather was better than it looks on the pictures. The smog was spoiling view.

But we had a good time in the park. Walking slowly and finding pretty spots everywhere.

The park was not free, but this was a good thing. For just 10 yuan we got a more quiet area to walk in.

The white pagoda was in the center of the park, on a small island.

So much lotus growing here, really beautiful.

We spent the whole afternoon here. It was a relaxing day, as we wanted it.

When we started to get hungry again, we went to a very popular street were you could find all kinds of street food.

We had tried a lot of things here, naturally. Starting with something like very young yoghurt, going on with a funny deep fried potatoe spiral and a spicy Chinese bratwurst. Then deep fried chicken and my favorite this evening: a cheese cake, which was very different from what I am used to. Thin and fresh with a good milky taste. And we tried the infamous durian fruit in a fried version. This was the only thing I couldn’t eat so far. The taste reminded me of half-rotten onions.

Then we walked back and and went into a chaotic subway station. It was Friday evening after all. It took 15 minutes to buy a ticket this time, waiting in a long queue.

We picked up some beers on the way. I found it really funny: half of the beers on offer were Chinese (like the famous Qingdao beer, picture below) and the other half was German beers but only from brands I have never seen before (Or did anybody hear off “Schaumhof” beer?) I chose an Adlerbräu because of the label: “Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalts”, the big Reinheitsgebot reference and a German flag on a Bavarian beer. Turned out to be very smokey. The Qingdao one was better actually.

This was a very nice last day in Beijing. Tomorrow, we will take the train to Qingdao. It was an interesting time here with mostly good impressions. But I am looking forward to the next stop now, in a smaller city with better air quality.

It was a very short night because we had to get up at 5 to join a bus tour to the Great Wall. On a first stop, we had a nice breakfast with steamed dumplings and hot soy milk soup. Then we went on and after an one-hour drive, we arrived at an very steep section of the Wall.

We had about two hours here so we started climbing the steep and irregular steps. Unfortunately, the sky was not very clear today, so the Wall on the other side of the valley was hard to see.

We climbed almost to the top of the first hill, which took about 50 minutes and a lot of sweat.

And this was the view close to the top:

This was a good start but unfortunately, it turned out that we fell into a tourist trap. This trip was booked via a travel agency but apparently, you are never save of these things..

So we had to visit a jade store and a shopping mall for food. The last one was not so bad because we could try some things here (without buying). These stops were annoying but interesting to see that this is common practice on the whole planet apparently (this was a Chinese only tour, BTW. I was the only foreigner with Meng as translator).

Then we had a simple lunch and went on to the Ming Tombs. Ok, we didn’t see the tombs actually only the sculptures on the old pathway. So this was not so much after all. Then back to the bus and to some station for registration, which turned out to be a ridiculous reason to bring us to another jade store. This was what we call a Kaffeefahrt (“promotional trip” in English?) in German.. We spent quite a while there to listen to jade stuff, which I didn’t care (or understand) about so I left after a while and had time to read my book. That was a foreigner’s advantage, nobody thought it was rude of me (for the Chinese, you needed a reason to leave apparently) and the staff was polite actually (to me at least). We managed to leave a bit early and were happy to be back in the center. We left the bus at the bird’s nest stadium and Water Cube from the Olympics but didn’t have the energy to go in. We had a walk to the next subway station and saw it from afar instead.

Back at the station close to our hotel, we found a Chinese BBQ restaurant, which turned out to be really good. It was great that you could order many different dishes in small amounts so that we could try half of the menu. The biggest dish was a hot pot:

You boil it yourself on the table and it was delicious. Besides of the different meats, grilled and served on spits, the only “weird” food today was a broad grilled tendon (or connective tissue?). Pretty chewy but not as strange as it sounds. And they even had their own – very good – home-brewed beer.

This was a good end to a day which was not entirely great. But hey, I saw the Great Wall and had two really good meals. And how many European can say that they experienced an authentic Chinese Kaffeefahrt? And lesson learned, no more organized trips. Public transport is all you need.